May 20
03:59 pm JST

Morrison has rejected efforts to increase the use of renewables to generate electricity, arguing it would damage the economy which relies on coal-fired power and mining exports.

That's right, to be replaced by other economic activity. Electricity for sale by other means. That's how an economy works. You needed these years to prepare for climate change increases, not doddering around with a 19th century economy

May 20
05:17 pm JST

May 20
07:00 pm JST

Like the old adage "be careful what you wish for", in a democracy the majority deserves what it votes for. The people of Oz will be soon find themselves on a steep learning curve as they are taken for a ride on the roller coaster of the Right. Hold on tight!

May 20
08:04 pm JST

Again the article isn’t mentioning the salient issue, which is immigration restrictions. That’s a big reason Labor suffered such a huge defeat.

LOL. Immigration is an issue but definitely not the one that cause Labor's defeat. It is Queensland's voters in the rural areas which is mining heartlands that undo labor. Labor cannot win a single seat outside Southeast Queensland. Job security is the biggest issue. Then there are Labor's new tax. The subject of immigration does not even get mention a lot during the campaigns.

May 20
08:09 pm JST

May 20
08:41 pm JST

The Australian polls universally predicted a defeat for the conservative Liberal Party. And they were dead wrong. Sounds familiar. (Think Trump and Brexit)

As far as I can see, many conservative voters the world over are refusing to talk to pollsters from left leaning news organizations that constantly ridicule them. Either that or the media pollsters are deliberately padding results in favor of leftist parties. Or both.

Anyway, these voters, while silent in the face of media ridicule have spoken loud and clear at the ballot box, giving a massive collective thumbs down to sneering media, identity politics, climate change alarmism, etc. in favor of common sense economic, social and immigration policies.

May 21
06:36 am JST

May 21
07:12 am JST

Australia's conservative coalition secured an outright parliamentary majority on Monday following a shock election victory, allowing Prime Minister Scott Morrison to progress his legislative agenda without the support of independents.

Morrison's coalition defied forecasts to be re-elected on Saturday in what he called a political miracle.

Shock election victory? How did Morrison's coalition manage to defy forecasts? What did the forecasters do wrong this time? Don't these forecasters know what they're doing? Or were they trying to influence the election by promoting their own personal choices as the winner?

May 21
10:04 am JST

@yoshisan88

Thanks. I did read your link to the article which I had already been aware of.

It highlights one factor in the equation.

However there are several more underlying reasons for the conservative Liberal Party defying the polls to win the Australian election over the liberal Labor Party in a similar manner to Trump defeating Clinton.

The Liberal Party was more trusted to manage a sound economy that they created.

The Liberal Party was more trusted to keep immigration within sensible bounds.

The Liberal Party was not willing to sacrifice the health of the economy for questionable climate change alarmism.

The Liberal Party does not have 'identity politics' agendas as Labor does. (Please Google the so called 'Safe Schools Program', and Tasmania's new genderless birth certificate law.....all Labor policies) Unbeknownst to many people outside Australia is that Labor is pushing LGBTQ 'anti discrimination' laws that will punish those who think differently.

The conservative heartland people (Queensland, etc.) outvoted the coastal liberal city people.

Etc.

Conservative Aussies politely declined Labors agenda....Many similarities to the U.S. I think.

LOL. I just love how people can take things out of contest. Australia is different from the USA. Please read my link.

May 21
12:02 pm JST

@sftk

I agree we need to care for the climate and environment etc. However global warming advocates cannot produce solid evidence that proves that temperatures are on a permanent upward curve. Recent higher temperatures could probably be the result of regular temperature fluctuations over millennia. There are no records of past millennia temperatures so how can they state categorically that the globe is warmer than then?

So, while we should strive to care well for the environment, common sense tells us that we don't need to go overboard with unnecessary policies based on fear mongering from global warming advocates who cannot prove their theory.

In the 70's we were warned of the coming ice age. What happened to that?

May 21
12:26 pm JST

May 21
12:48 pm JST

There are no records of past millennia temperatures so how can they state categorically that the globe is warmer than then?

I wonder if you bothered to fact check yourself to find out if there is actually an answer for that.

The rest of your post would indicate you didn't.

When you guys talk about things and are clearly ignorant of how things work, it's hard to respect anything you say, since you talk so confidently about your opinion, while being clearly ignorant of how things work.

Recent higher temperatures could probably be the result of regular temperature fluctuations over millennia. There are no records of past millennia temperatures so how can they state categorically that the globe is warmer than then?

Let's see what the big boys have to say.

*Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity**. We know about past climates because of evidence left in tree rings, layers of ice in glaciers, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. For example, bubbles of air in glacial ice trap tiny samples of Earth’s atmosphere, giving scientists a history of greenhouse gases that stretches back more than 800,000 years. The chemical make-up of the ice provides clues to the average global temperature.*

So, there certainly have been changes in the global temperature over millennia, and there are records of these changes to be found all over the Earth.

So this bout of global warming is no different, right?

Wrong.

Global warming today is happening at a much, much faster rate than at any time in the past.

*Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual.*

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php

Changes that occur over 5000 years can be adapted to. When those same changes occur in what in planetary and evolutionary terms is the blink of an eyelid, there is no time to adapt. Common sense surely tells us that we need to do all we can to stop this headlong sprint into a brick wall that is 100% of our own making.

May 21
01:59 pm JST

climate deniers continue to suck out all the air in the room towards action and make everything take more energy. They'll keep moving goal posts in their denials as well, resulting in incredible lists of answers like this one: https://grist.org/series/skeptics/ just to keep up with the wakamole of deniers.

May 21
02:06 pm JST

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" ― Isaac Asimov

May 21
02:24 pm JST

Please produce records of past millennia temperatures including where these temperatures were taken and by whom

There's a graph on the NASA link I gave above, that shows clearly the fluctuation in temperature over the past 800 millennia, and another graph of the past 1500 years that shows the sudden spike in the last century or so. Also links to the original data.

I wonder if you bothered to fact check yourself to find out if there is actually an answer for that.

May 21
03:13 pm JST

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" ― Isaac Asimov" This this this...

The anti-intellectualism and knee-jerk fear based politics has sadly begun to win, we as a species historically only fairly recently pulled ourselves out of squalor and ignorance, yet we seem to be well on the path to quickly erode the progress of the last few centuries towards better education, understanding and equality.

How you feel about something doesn't always result in a correct, good or fair outcome.

How quickly we forget

Slavery ended in the US just around 5 generations ago

Workers rights began to be established

A century ago we had a life expectancy of just over 50, now in or heading the 80s in most places

Women were only just getting the vote in most places 100 years ago.

In the 50s we nearly eradicated a terrible potentially debilitating disease using vaccines.

All of these things weren't possibly without forward looking ideas, science, education and fighting for those less fortunate. Governments, scientists, modern medicine, unions...

We face the onslaught of theocratization of relatively secular and free countries.

All evidence points to the risks to the very sustainability of our planet, and even if not we can see, feel and breath our use and abuse of the planet , what would be the worst result of trying harder.. a nicer place?

We are seeing the very basis of the scientific method that has given us this life people so desperately don't want to give up or change being challenged.

The right when it was about fiscal responsibility and some degree of conservative input to balance other potentially too fast moving progressive changes I could respect to a degree.. but not now, we have descended into madness.

On the other side the far left more are as likely to be into woo woo superfoods, magic massages and other nonsense, which I would just as readily call out, as they are any other cause..

May 21
03:34 pm JST

Please produce records of past millennia temperatures including where these temperatures were taken and by whom. Then we can compare them with modern records.

And you show that you didn't bother to fact check yourself. Of course they didn't have thermometers a millennia ago. That doesn't mean there aren't other ways to figure out what temperatures were.

Or if you disbelieve that because 'how could they know the temperature without a thermometer', then you shouldn't ever leave your house, because every car and airplane is built on science just like that.

May 21
03:36 pm JST

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" ― Isaac Asimov" This this this...

Yeah, it's like posters trying to claim we can't know what past temperatures were due to a lack of thermometers. They think their ignorance of how science determines past temperatures makes their argument valid somehow.

May 21
03:38 pm JST

*I saw the NASA graph. It's a model based on estimates of what past millennia temperatures mayhave been according to 'evidence' in nature. No actual recorded temperatures cited.*

It isn't 'evidence'. It's evidence. Just because you don't know how to read it, don't mean it isn't valid.

You may as well say fingerprints, DNA and other forensic evidence found at a crime scene isn't enough to prove that Suspect A was there, you actually have to have seen them there in person, wielding a bloody knife or smoking gun, at the time the deed was done.

There is plenty of evidence that the global warming we are experiencing is unprecedented. Only those who have reason to be averse to 'unnecessary policies' (meaning they're afraid their own bottom line is going to be affected, or they just can't be bothered to worry about the world we're leaving to our grandkids, so long as they can just carry on as 'normal') refuse to read the writing on the wall.